Violent attacks and killings of RSS and BJP workers have increased ever since the Left front government took charge in Kerala in May 2016, and the situation doesn’t seem to be improving. Barely four days after BJP President Amit Shah shared the news of a young BJP worker named Vishnu being hacked to death, comes the news of another BJP worker named Ramith being killed in Kerala.
The latest killing has taken place in Kannur district, from where the current Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan hails. The district is notorious for left-wing terror and has been termed as India’s ‘political murder capital’ by many commentators.
The district was in news earlier this year prior to assembly elections in Kerala for similar reasons. It had seen murder of 27-year-old RSS worker Sujith, who was earlier a member of the communist party. Like most radical groups, communists too don’t tolerate someone leaving their lines, and they retaliate through violence.
During his campaigns for assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too had talked about the violence, and had highlighted the example of Sadanandan Master – a BJP candidate whose legs were hacked by communists but who dared to fight elections against them from one of the constituencies in Kannur.
In the latest case, Ramith was attacked and killed in Pinarayi town, which happens to be the hometown of the current CM. This is not the first time such tragedy has befallen on Ramith’s family. In 2002, Ramith’s father Uthaman too was killed by suspected communists.
Communists didn’t stop at murdering Ramith’s father. The following day in 2002, communists killed two more people who were returning from funeral of Uthaman. It happened to be a hartal day called to protest the killing of Uthaman.
Now in a situation that sounds eerily similar to what happened 14 years ago, BJP has called for a hartal tomorrow to protest against the killing of Ramith. One hopes that the state government will not allow a repeat of the twin killings, though it failed to stop the repeat of killing of Ramith’s father.
However, with the state ruled by a Chief Minister, who has been accused of supporting political killings, things look bleak. It should be recalled that a former colleague of Pinarayi Vijayan had claimed that the Kerala CM had asked his Kerala communists to learn the ‘art of killing’ from Bengali communists who would ‘kidnap people, bury their bodies in deep pit along with a sack of salt’.
